Wednesday, July 07, 2010

It really wasn’t that bad

I took Daughter Number 1 and a couple of her gal pals to see The Last Airbender last night. Avatar: The Last Airbender is her absolute favorite program on TV. I didn’t know that much about it, but was pretty interested based on the previews I’d seen at movies and on TV, but then it started getting crucified by reviewers. It has an 8% fresh rating on Rottentomatoes; for some perspective, Twilight: Eclipse has a 53% rating, Signs (Perhaps Shyamalan’s dumbest film ever) has a 74% rating. Obviously some people just don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

Anyway, the plot’s not all that important. It is suffice to say that a young boy has a great destiny and a great power and is going on a great journey. Beyond that, there are lots of big fight scenes, action sequences and special effects. It this a good movie? Well, not really, but it’s not bad either. It’s a popcorn flick and as such it really gets a bit more leeway in my estimation. Also, it’s a popcorn flick geared toward younger audiences based on a kid’s cartoon. I just really don’t understand why so many reviewers feel the need to pile on all this hate. Let’s take another perspective shot – Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel has a 20% fresh rating. Come on! Again, The Last Airbender is no high-minded fare, but it’s better than animated chipmunks.

My final analysis is to wait for video. It’s really not worth seeing in the theater. Oh, by the way, we saw it in 2D – after Alice in Wonderland I refuse to see any live-action film in 3D until convinced it really does something for the film – and it came off just fine.

4 comments:

It's up a percentage point from last week, believe it or not. I thought the cast looked good, but I also got a vague sense that someone had pinned a lot of hopes on merchandising the heck out of this movie. (Not that I can back that up.)

"Signs" was dumber than "The Village"? One of my co-workers at the time was enraged after seeing that one in the theater.